Group 1. Sabotage was ruled out, and the accident was eventually traced to a loose turbine on the B-57B hitting the fuse of an armed 500 lb bomb. 4 June A U.S. Air Force Fairchild C-119G Flying Boxcar is destroyed in crash in field near the turnpike in Sabattus, Maine, after double engine failure. Crew bails out and is uninjured. 11 June F-102A jet interceptor explodes on test flight from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The pilot, USAF Maj. Alexander Kratz Rupp, is killed. Accident was caused by material failure leading to breakage of the left wing, which had been reused from another aircraft. In 1963 Rupp had been one of the 34 finalists for NASA Astronaut Group 3, but ultimately was not selected. 18 June USAF Lockheed NF-104A Starfighter, 56-0756, assigned to Air Force Systems Command Test Pilot School, Edwards Air Force Base, California, suffers rocket oxidizer explosion this date, blowing off portion of the tail, pilot landed safely. Repaired and flown again. 18 June On the very first Operation Arc Light mission flown by Boeing B-52 Stratofortress aircraft of SAC to hit a target in South Vietnam, a total of 30 B-52Fs depart Andersen AFB, Guam just after midnight, flying in ten cells of three aircraft, to hit a suspected Viet Cong stronghold in the Bến Cát District, 40 miles N of Saigon. Unexpected tailwinds from a typhoon cause the bombers to arrive seven minutes early at their refuelling point with KC-135 tankers over the South China Sea at a point between South Vietnam and the island of Luzon. The three planes of Green Cell, in the lead, begin a 360 degree turn to make their rendezvous, and in doing so cross the path of Blue Cell and directly towards oncoming Yellow Cell. In the darkness, B-52F 57-0047 and 57-0179, both aircraft of the 441st Bombardment Squadron, 320th Bombardment Wing, Mather AFB, California, but flown by crews assigned to the 20th Bombardment Squadron, 7th Bomb Wing, Carswell AFB, Texas and attached to the 3960th Strategic Wing, Andersen AFB, Guam, collided, killing eight crew, with four survivors, plus one body recovered. The four are located and picked up by a Grumman HU-16A Albatross amphibian, 51-5287, but it is damaged on take-off by a heavy sea state and those on board have to transfer to a Norwegian freighter and a Navy vessel, the Albatross sinking thereafter. Another B-52 loses a hydraulic